There is no war in Ba Sing Se

Earlier today on Twitter, Chuck Wendig posted:

Every week, every month, every year, another story, the same story told over again. White police killing unarmed black men. White men on the street killing unarmed black men. Because they thought the black men were armed. Because they felt threatened. Because they were afraid for their lives. Because the black man didn’t obey fast enough, was wearing a hoodie, was playing his music too loud. And time and time again, verdicts handed down that say, that makes sense. Of course you were afraid; of course you killed to protect yourself from the threat that wasn’t there.

I think about what I feel like, as a white woman of less than Amazonian build, walking down the street alone at night. Tensing up just that little bit when I see someone else approaching; tensing up that little bit more when I see that it’s a man. I imagine what it would be like to be a black man, and to tense up that little bit more when I see it’s a police officer. To see such a person as a hazard, rather than an ally if trouble occurs.

An op-ed in the New York Times today said,

Any police department that tolerates such conduct, and whose officers are unable or unwilling to defuse such confrontations without killing people, needs to be reformed.

This is fundamental. When we have riot police on the streets in military gear, SWAT teams burning infants with stun grenades, tanks rolling through suburbia because they’re army surplus and they might as well go somewhere — then something has gone so profoundly wrong I don’t have the words to describe it. When police turn their force against black men who have done nothing to deserve it, I can’t say “something has gone wrong,” because that implies it was ever right to begin with. But this is just a new verse in the same song. From its very founding, the relationship between the United States of America and its black citizens has been wrong. (The relationship between the United States of America and any of its minority citizens.) This country has used every tool at its disposal, from law to money to rhetoric to armed violence, to preserve the imbalance against them. Our steps in the other direction have been too few, too small, too often reversed with steps in the other direction. The problem hasn’t gone away. It’s right there today, tonight, all around us.

We need to reform a lot more than just the police. But the police are a place to start. If we cannot trust them, then we cannot trust anything that follows.

Books read, last several months

I realized a few weeks ago that I’ve been forgetting to make book posts. So this is September, October, and November — but it is also an incomplete list. (I’ve decided to omit my research reading, because it would constitute a minor spoiler for the fourth Memoir.)

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A Year in Pictures – Tower and Head

Tower and Head
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I have no idea why there is a giant sculpture of a severed head at the foot of the Town Hall Tower in Kraków. It’s hollow and big enough to climb inside (if you look closely at the photo, you can see somebody peering out through one of the eye sockets), and it’s one of the more inexplicable bits of public art I’ve ever seen. Dusted with snow, though, it lands in a weird zone between “creepy” and “charming.” 🙂

A Year in Pictures – Signpost in the Middle of Nowhere

Signpost in the Middle of Nowhere
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I can’t tell if this picture is at all funny without the story behind it.

My husband and I spent a day and a half on Inis Mór, and the morning we woke up there, we decided to go to Dún Dúchathair — the less famous cousin of Dún Aengus. We were told to go along the coast road and then turn right at the sign — well, there was no sign at the coast, but we turned right at the first chance we had, and there was a sign a little ways in. So we follow the road . . .

. . . which turns into a track . . .

. . . which turns into a footpath . . .

. . . which dead-ends at a low stone wall. Which we go around, and at that point we’re lost in the wilds of Inis Mór (note: the island is only about a mile wide). We head on in more or less the same direction we were originally going, hoping to find the fort, and eventually we find this sign: Dún Dúchathair, thataway. Sitting all by its lonesome in the middle of a limestone moonscape.

As I said to my husband, “I hope the lads don’t get drunk of a Saturday night ane come out here to give that sign a spin around its post.”

We went thataway, and we did indeed find the Black Fort, so all was well. But the sign itself still amuses me.

A Year in Pictures – The Moon at Kiyomizudera

The Moon at Kiyomizudera
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If I had planned this whole thing better, I would have saved this picture for today. It is the shot that sparked this post, and today is my father’s birthday, so it would have been a nice bit of timing! That post references the light-up at Kiyomizudera, though, and so that is what I give you today. with a cameo appearance by the moon.

Happy birthday, Dad. You are my favorite pusher of drugs expensive new hobbies. 🙂

A Year in Pictures – Not a Stave Church

Zakopane Church
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This isn’t actually a stave church, but the thing it reminded me of most was the churches in Norway that my mother has pictures of, so my brain insisted on tagging it “that stave church in Zakopane.” Probably because those are basically the only wooden churches I know, other than the New England white clapboard type. Regardless: autumn color, nice vertical framing between the trees, me likey, yes. 🙂

tonight’s writing lesson

Do not end your day’s work with a line like this:

Lord Rossmere was not speaking to inform us, though; all that was prelude to his next statement.

Because when you come back to the text, you will not remember what that next statement was supposed to be. (Possibly I never knew, and that was just me reminding myself to justify the “as you know, Bob” dialogue that precedes it. I haven’t worked on this bit since before my NY/DC trip, so I really don’t recall.)

On the other hand, I am pleased with this line:

I did not say to him that I had kept the information secret precisely to avoid our current situation. First, because it was only true in part; and second, because Tom was stepping firmly on my foot.

Would you believe that Tom was originally a throwaway character invented solely because somebody like Lord Hilford wouldn’t travel alone? The stuff about his working-class origins came later, so that he and Isabella wouldn’t be nonentities to one another. And then I decided, almost on a whim, to have him become an actual colleague, at least to the extent of going to Bayembe with Isabella. Next thing I knew, he was a fixture of the story, and one of my favorite characters in the entire series.

It only looks like we plan this stuff. Half of it happens by accident.

A Year in Pictures – Oxford From Above

Oxford From Above
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Some places, you can really only capture from a high vantage point. While we were climbing the tower of the University Church, we got this lovely view into the courtyard of (I think) All Souls College. I’m sure I could have taken some nice photos from within its bounds, but to get the whole thing, you really need to be outside and above.

Nerdiness at Kepler’s on Saturday

If you’re in the Bay Area and interested in SF/F, Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park is doing an event on Saturday the 15th, with items ranging from a class in how to speak Dothraki to a panel on the topic of which is better: fantasy or SF?

Now, the panelists for this are myself, Ellen Klages, Pat Murphy, and Chaz Brenchley. Ellen and I were talking this past weekend at World Fantasy, and she points out that she knows herself, she knows Pat, and she knows me. And I know Chaz.

This panel is not likely to go according to the description. 😛

I’m not sure whether the plan is for me to brandish a plastic sword at Ellen proclaiming that fantasy is better, while she brandishes a plastic raygun at me proclaiming the supremacy of SF, or whether I’m going to be waving the sword and championing SF while she waves the raygun and champions fantasy. Quite possibly we will do both. Either way, there are likely to be Shenanigans. And plastic weaponry. And a good deal of silliness. We will certainly do our best to be entertaining, regardless. 4 p.m., Menlo Park, be there or never learn the truth of which genre is supreme.

Say Yes to Telekinetic Squirrels!

A while back there was a furor over a YA novel with gay characters, whose authors faced pressure from a potential agent to make him straight (or at least not reveal his orientation until later in the series).

Now, at long last, Stranger (by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith) is out in the world. Since this is fixed in everybody’s mind as the “Yes to Gay YA” book, I feel I should quote from Rachel’s post announcing the book’s release:

But you could just as easily call it “The one with the telekinetic squirrels,” or “The X-Men in the post-apocalyptic Wild West,” or “The one where the sheriff is super-strong, the doctor can speed up time, and the plant life is out to get you.”

{…}

Other points of possible interest: Psychic powers. Luscious food descriptions. Detailed world-building. Hurt-comfort- lots of hurt-comfort. Thrilling battle sequences. Cute animals. Killer crystal trees. Romance in every configuration: gay, straight, lesbian, and poly. Illusion-casting rabbits. Flying cats. And, of course, telekinetic squirrels.

If one or more of those things appeals to you, various buy links are here, and Sherwood discusses their writing process here. I’m going to be ordering it from my local B&N, to help keep it on the shelves — because quite apart from the aforementioned furor, things like this don’t get enough attention in book publishing.

And, y’know: who can pass up telekinetic squirrels?